Authors Note: On October 7th, 2023 Gaza was under attack, and the powers that be took this opportunity to continue the heinous and violent acts against the Palestinian people that have been going on for decades (don’t believe me? Look towards the artists and activists. Ethridge Knight wrote a poem called “Peace Process” speaking about Palestine, Angela Davis has been speaking about the appalling actions against Palestinians for ages, and Palestinian artists/activists have been shouting forever). We are a year into this genocide and the fight will continue until the liberation of Palestinians becomes a reality. Follow your local orgs for any actions/spreading of word you can do.
September 27th, 2024 Hurricane Helene made landfall in the south and has now left several areas of the East/South of America destroyed. The approval of the FEMA budget was blocked, there are people who no longer have a home to go to, and police enforcement is preventing people from “looting” in a time where they do not have access to basic needs any other way. There are local fundraisers happening to help those in NC and TN, and if you’d like to donate please look at sources such as The Alight Arts Collective or the Black Trans Collective.
This government decides to fund wars in their sleep while they turn a blind eye to the citizens in their backyard. They do not care - beyond that they are actively testing your limit of obedience. Take care of your neighbors, take care of yourself, and do not go silent.
Jesus - Q3 felt like a LIFETIME.
The rest of this summer sure was something else. It was equally beautiful and restful and fucking chaotic and heartbreaking. She contained MULTITUDES.
But, summer is over baby! Bring me the changing of leaves, the cold brisk, and the woodsy smell of Fall! Fall is the part of me that makes me miss the East Coast the most. I went to school in New England and grew up in New York so I find an immense amount of comfort in this season. I adore occasional rainy days1, layering clothing, and the start of the season to slow the fuck DOWN. For now:
RECAP! RECAP! RECAP!
July 2024:
I’mma be honest - July was a blur. I’m looking at my calendar right now and can very well tell I did A LOT, but most of it was foundation work. Setting meetings, scaffolding ideas, and editing my manuscript. July was like the boring season of any show worth watching. Did a lot of action happen? Probably not, BUT it was foundational for the juicy seasons to come. And boy were they juicy.
August 2024:
So.... August sucked for everyone, right? Well okay - in hindsight, August wasn’t terrible, but it was truly the most emotionally challenging month this entire year. And yes, more so than May when I literally came out to my mother - so that’s saying something. In between truly the most anxious month I’ve had this year, I went to the THOI as a fellow and got to be around my writing community during the first half which provided a nice distraction of how a handful of my relationships were changing in real-time. I got to reconnect with people who have seen many different versions of me and whom I love dearly. Even while most of my days were riddled with a shot nervous system - I felt the most stable in this space (THOI) than I ever have. When I got back home, I had lots of decompression walks with Caeli and allowed myself to feel grief for the ending of something.
September 2024:
✨and like that, single again✨ It’s fine, death and rebirth and all of that is something I’m slowly mastering (shout out to my Scorpio rising). It’s the first time I allowed myself to date vulnerably, honestly, and candidly in a few years and I think it’s okay it didn’t go further than it was meant to.
People I loved deeply have moved on before I have, and sometimes I find myself conflicted about why that is. But no matter how many hours I decide to ponder over it, the reality is that, I’m good (more than good). The world didn’t end Spring of 2022. I am strikingly different and significantly more grounded in who I am than I was when I first met them. And I repeat, I am so fucking proud of this person I’ve become and continue to become. They’ve been through a lot and yet - they find space to still love. I think that’s incredible.
Another ending/beginning: I submitted my final draft of my manuscript! Yes, the editing process for the To Print version is on its way! AHHHHHH! This fucking book - god it’s so special to me. A lil sneak peek: This book revolves heavily around my relationship with my mother around the themes of religion, sexuality, and identity. I began this before I came out. I wrote some parts posthumously. The grief that sits with me the most is: that the poems I wrote predicting the fall of this version of my relationship with my mother came true in some parts. That’s been difficult to sit with and is what took up most of my heart space in August.
The cool thing I get to do now: work with my friends to edit this masterpiece. I am beyond grateful that GoB has allowed me to pick my illustrator and my editor. I am so grateful that I get to work with people who are incredible artists themselves and know my story so I know there is going to be a grand amount of tender/loving care into this. This 2nd collection is a labor of love. From every single person who’s worked on it; a gigantic mushy pile of love.
On with the show!
READING:
If you didn’t catch it - I wrote a big ol’ post about how I went from only reading 3 books in 2020 to reading 30 (now 45) books in 2024. I’ve been consuming books like it is the only thing that can sustain me. But I will say - I’m a little burnt out.
I’ve decided to not pick a new batch of books to read in October and instead just allow myself to slowly begin the Interview With The Vampire Chronicles. I am both excited and intimated about delving into the 11-book series; so no poetry, non-fic, fic, audio, or Kindle breakdown this month. Just me and the first three books of Anne Rice’s love child.
(Edit: I lied, I’ve read Interview With The Vampire, Fruit of The Dead, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and started IWTV #2 and Firekeeper’s Daughter since starting this draft 🫣).
Even though I read some really great books this Summer, I’m going to switch it up for a second and talk about some GRAVEYARD books I read (well, tried to at least). Graveyard books are probably what you think they are: books that were not my vibe for one reason or another, thus having to send them to the graveyard.
(My top 3 of the Summer before I roast some plotlines are: Lonely Castle In The Mirror, Let Me Tell You What I Mean, and Chain Gang All-Stars)
Our Share of Night
This is a book in translation with heavy raving reviews and IIIIIIIII… really couldn’t get into it. I say this knowing I may have just missed the point, or maybe I should have read it in Spanish, but what I was expecting was a Horror novel with amazing exposition to the eventual breathtaking reveal. Alas, I didn’t get any of that. What I felt I got was a family drama interwoven with a love story (stories). Which is FINE, just not what I wanted.
I must say I do not think the English translation helped it. There’s a line that just absolutely took me out that says “It was like porn magazines, but moving”. This line, in context, comes from a younger character catching Juan and another man having sex (that action itself is also written weirdly, even coming from the perspective of a younger character) and I think the translation must be incredibly direct but the writing felt so odd to me, and the story just didn’t hook me enough to see past those moments that came in abundance.
🌟 1/5
Walking Practice
This one hurt because I really loved the concept of Walking Practice. An alien that landed on earth ages ago learning to survive by killing and eating people by using… Tinder? Fuck yeah! What ended up taking me out and having to put down the book at 50% was the writing style. It is written from the perspective of this alien’s personal diary. Lots of shorthand, acronyms, emojis, etc etc. I think it makes the book incredibly unique and super fucking cool, and Dolki Min took a risk and I think that is something to be applauded. I simply couldn’t find it in me to stick around to figure out what happens at the end.
🌟 2/5
Apollo’s Song
Our Share of Night is not nearly as hated as this graphic novel is for me. The premise?2 A dude who was once a sperm (I’m not being facetious here, this is how the graphic novel starts) made it to the queen or some shit and essentially knew what love was but then experiences so many past lives where he and his lover(s) have tumultuous endings. Then in his current timeline, he is a literal sociopath3 and kills anything (specifically animals) that he sees in love. So he gets shipped off to get electroshock therapy that makes him relive these past lives.
I did not get past life #2. It was one of the worst books/graphic novels I have ever read. I will not expand upon this opinion.
🌟 -1,000,000/5
ENTERTAINMENT:
It’s spooky season and what else to put in the Entertainment section other than my personal top 5 get-ready-for-Halloween movies. Nearly all of them are DCOM movies but what can I say? Disney put their whole foot in Halloween movies/episodes in the 90s and they still hold true for me 20+ years later.
Want actually spooky Halloween movies? Here are my favs “maybe don’t watch these alone” horror movies. I’m not a slasher film girly but I love a movie that kind of fucks with your head and we as a collective do not need to read further in to that.
I’m trying to be better at watching different Halloween movies so please spam me with your favs!
PLAYING:
I must admit: It’s been a Mitski Fall.
I got to see Mitski on September 24th at The Greek in Berkeley and I just fell in love with her just a tad bit more. She is so goofy and gives interpretive dance/theatre kid energy. I could tell she was having so much fun galavanting around. Also, Mitski is the truest Scorpio Rising I have ever heard speak. She said something along the lines of “all things have to end so we can appreciate it more. That’s why we all die.” and CHUCKLED AT HERSELF. The way I have said nearly those exact same words. God - I love a Scorpio big three placement.
Here are my top 5 Mitski songs:
OBSERVATION:
Whenever there’s an act of human kindness that I just get to be a witness to, I write it down. I’ve been doing this for a few years now. It feels important, to remember kindness outside of what you do/what is done for you. Or to quote Lestat:
“I can live without God. I can even come to live with the idea there is no afterlife. But I do not think I could go on if I did not believe in the possibility of goodness.”
A family is running to make their train. Most of them make it except for a mother carrying her kid. I can imagine her trying to wrangle a sleepy or wily child just in time to not get caught in a train but miss thee doors of her transfer. She is hitting the door, her friend/family doing the same looking around for help on the other side. My heart breaks, when, the door opens. She slips in. The family is reunited.
There are boys jumping off rocks, and men who become boys when they climb to jump off rocks. With extended bellies and gray hairs, they reach the edge of the cliff look at each other wearily, and shake off the nerves. Dive head first, rinse, and repeat.
On a long stretch of road, at a red light, a man runs out and hits the walk signal button for an older lady who is halfway in the street. She smiles and continues to bob her way down the walkway. Everyone waits, patiently.
A woman walks into our workshop, distraught. “Can you help someone in crisis? Someone who’s been walking around for days with nowhere to go?” B & Ruby quickly offer a place to sit and some snacks. Mel cleans out a can to fill it with water. We all welcome her. She tries, and we can see she wants to try. She takes her offerings and heads out instead.
My friends create a fundraiser to help those in need after Hurricane Helene. No one asked, they just did.
Extending kindness is vital to our survival just like burning the whole fucking system down is. Abolition means we take care of each other. It’s not a perfect system and I am still figuring out what it looks like in my own life. Look around, take note, lets look outside of ourselves time to time.
RECOMMEND:
I have two things to recommend to y’all as we begin to slow down with the season:
Yoga
In 2019, I was on track to getting my Yoga Teacher Certification. I would go to class several times a week and was ramping up to go to a specific retreat that would certify me then - lockdown happened (predictable transition).
That preface to say - yoga was a monumental part of my life those couple of years. It was my form of meditation and it felt good to treat my body in a way that was kind and motivating. It also grounded me in my spiritual practice which was and is incredibly important to me.
That being said - when I stopped going to classes, it was hard for me to find the want to continue practicing. Throughout the years I’ve ebbed and flowed on practicing yoga and just completely losing the routine altogether, but nonetheless, I always find my way back to it.
I have yet to take an in-person class (in fact I have not taken an in-person yoga class since 2020, yikes), but I have my eyes set on a few classes suggested to me by the power of Lex! For now - a handful of times a week I will put on Nourished Natasha and get 20-40 Mins in and I remember why I fell in love with the practice in the first place.
Making art with no purpose
As I submitted my manuscript for review my mind instantly freed up space to make so much art. Silly art that is. I miss creating things with my hands. Listen - I love words, and I’ll venture as far as to say I’m kinda fucking good at it, but nothing beats the feeling of sticky glue hands or clay drying then cracking on your knuckles.
However, dedicating time and money to a studio is not the easiest decision. I have my eyes on a few ceramic studios in the East Bay and plan on joining one next year, but for now I have been collaging any moment I get. I fully revamped my website with a bunch of lil drawings, postcards, and old art that I cut up years ago. And I started one of those junk journals the TikTok girlies are constantly (lovingly) yapping about. My junk journal is a lil different. I do no journal in it at all, nor do I dedicate a spread to one eventful day/weekend/trip. I just gather lil things I know I want to cut up and place them with glue tape. Also, glue tape? I fucking LOVE glue tape.
That being said - make art with no purpose or expectation. This is my favorite way of creating. When I was a younger artist I had lofty goals and wants for my art career. Now the goal is simple:
To forever and always love making art.
I have full faith that if I continue chasing that, all else will fall into place.
TRAVELING:
Ohhhhhh I have had an easy travel Q3. I didn’t go anywhere in July, went to my residency in Mendicino in August, and stayed my ass put once more in September. The end of Q4 has different plans for me but I’ll talk about that in due time.
Also! I can only say so much more about travelling!!! Just like my O in the REPORT of this acronym I am considering changing this time to time, with the home T being travel. I think about it more, but any T things you wanna hear me blab about, do let me know. Lets create a new acronym, together.
Wowee! You made it!
If you have any thoughts or your own little R.E.P.O.R.Ts, please share them. I’d love to get a peek inside your days.
Thanks for reading, thanks for holding space, thanks for being here.
Okay, after living in California for nearly 10 years - y’all ALWAYS bug out when someone says they love rain. Listen - the Northeast has a regular ass rainy season (maybe not anymore - but def when I was growing up). We had sunny days in the Fall and Winter, with the occasional downpour. That’s the rainy season I am referring to - not the gloomy reality that is the atmospheric river of the PNW. Fall in the East - they can never make me hate you.
I am reciting this from memory so I will absolutely be getting some of this wrong but the disdain stays the same.
Symptoms of Sociopathy: Lack of empathy, disregard for others' rights and feelings, manipulation, cruelty, impulsiveness, lying, law-breaking, lack of regard for safety